Day 134: Register Redux

After failing so dismally with Mr. Miller's register cutting jig from his eBook Most Excellent, I cut off the three slots I screwed up and hauled out the Incra table saw crosscut sled I had purchased a few months back. Now, I understood the cuts I would make with it would not be exactly perfect to the 1/1000th of an inch, but I figured I could get skippy damn close. So, I tested it out.

Well, they measured out with the calipers to be very, very close to perfect, so I, in my typical Tortuga fashion, charged ahead with cutting all of the remaining slots.

In the end, I only screwed up three, which ain't bad (for me). The screwups entailed cutting the slots too wide because I was not only running the register through the blade, I was pulling it back over the blade to finish, as well. Just. Plain. Stupid. The offending gaps were produced on the backstroke. Good grief, sometimes I do scare myself. I'll be chatting with Owen Daly of Owen Daly Early Keyboard Instruments about this to see if I should just throw it away and have a do-over, but, until then, I'll keep at it by repairing the three.

Along with this, the acquisitions keep taking place at Tortuga Early Instruments Worldwide Headquarters. First, one of the books recommended to me by my Master Builder friend, Paul Irvin, arrived last week.

It's an excellent study with a nice variety of old instruments I frankly have no hope of seeing in person any time soon. I've been studying it for the past week and will be poring over it again tonight.

A couple of other hardware pieces also showed up: a Lie-Nielsen 62 low-angle jack plane and a Kreg Band Saw Fence with Micro-adjuster.

Coincidentally, I'm planning on using the plane to make jacks for the instrument. It comes highly recommended from more than one woodworker/maker/builder pal. The only jack left to arrive is a little Lie-Nielsen 60 1/2 block plane. Random Roger Green loaned me one when I was working on the Roubo bench and it was love at first use. It should be arriving any minute now.

When making some test cuts with the new Grizzly band saw, I noticed some blade drift, probably due to the installation of the 6" riser (that gives me 12" of vertical clearance for bigger cuts) and the fact it could use a tune-up. When I mentioned this to my good friend, Mark Roberts of Mark Roberts Guitars and Ukuleles (you really should check out his site - he makes some of the most beautiful instruments I've ever seen), he recommended I pick up a Kreg fence because it not only adjusts for blade drift, it accommodates the nifty microadjuster, which every conscientious woodworker needs.

This coming Sunday has been set aside for shop work. I'll be installing the new Kreg fence, working on the registers, wire brushing the 6" jointer, and cleaning up the shop - it's a mess. I'm hoping my daughter, Jordan, and my son, Trey, will be here for a visit and to help out a little.

Until next time...